Geneaology

One of the first documents for locating ancestors is to search the census records. The US census has been collected every 10 years since 1790. The information varies with the most recently released census being the 1940 census. Census records provide a treasure trove of information such as year of immigration, year of naturalization and country of parents birth among other things. Searching the census documents in Ireland are not as easy. Early census reports were taken in Ireland starting in 1813 and every 10 years after. But for several reasons they were destroyed either by the government or in armed conflict in the early twentieth century. You may be lucky enough to find some your relatives in the fragments of one of the four 1821-1951census records that were recovered after explosion in the Public Records Offices during the Civil War of 1922. Full census records do exist in the National Archives for 1901 & 1911 and are published on-line. http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ Once the townland of the ancestor is known, a great deal more information can be found from the 1901 & 1911 census. For more information about tracing your family history in Ireland check out this free website Irish Genealogy Toolkit. http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/index.html Like this:Like...

Family Research in Ireland I wanted to share an anecdote or two about my obsession with genealogy that has fed my passion for Ireland and all things Irish. I have made many discoveries and connections with people while doing genealogy including finding my Great Grandmother Honora Agnes Hughes’ ancestral home in Ballinamore Bridge, Co. Galway. My grandmother’s cousin owns the farm, which I think makes him my second cousin twice removed. In 2006, my mother gave me a copy of a last will and testament listing the farm’s owners. It showed that along with the USA family that the cousins in Ireland received a sizeable share of our great aunt’s estate. The Lost Art of the Written Letter Pays Off! With that information in hand, I went to the Eirecom , Ireland’s phone book on-line and googled the name in Ballinamore Bridge and 3 families showed up. They all received a letter from me and to my great amazement and delight; I received a response from all three. One of the families was not a relative, but personally knew my cousins (twice removed) and turned over the letter to my Irish kith & kin! That began a correspondence that has continued now for more than six years. Mother and I have made two visits and each time we have been treated as foreign dignitaries! We are in continuous correspondence with four families and all are happy to have been reunited. Nevertheless, the story does not end there… As I continued my research, I have developed a peculiar and tenacious sense of inquiry for the dead and for living strangers. Consequently, I have contacted many people out of the blue to inform them of our common lineage. Each one of them has been quite gracious, kind, and accommodating in my quest to (figuratively) unearth all of my ancestors. Follow Your Instincts; you just may be surprised! One such story involves a great uncle of my dad’s who passed away in Florida in the late 90’s. No one knew anything about him. I had a hunch he was our family but needed the documentation to prove it. I presented myself at the Health Department, vital statistics window in FL while there on a business trip, and pulled his death certificate. From that, I found his son who lived in Virginia. I googled the name and there was all of his contact information including his work email. He got a very long and detailed email that began with “please read this before you hit delete”. After he read my dissertation, he consulted with his wife and sister who told him I was likely a nut and he should hit delete at once!...

If you are interested in finding your Irish Roots there just may be someone looking to find their long lost ancestors! Ireland Reaching Out is just such a place that hopes to link the ancestors of those who left Ireland to the communities and Parishes of origin and hopefully reunite long lost cousins! The Ireland Reaching Out (IrelandXO) programme is based on a simple idea; instead of waiting for people of Irish descent to trace their roots, we go the other way. Working through voluntary effort at a townland, village and parish level in Ireland, we identify who left those areas, and trace them and their descendants worldwide. IrelandXO offers a free service and it is a not for profit organisation. Besides proactively tracing people of Irish heritage around the world, if you have Irish ancestry, and are thinking of coming to Ireland, we make sure, as far as we can, that someone local is here to meet you when you arrive – someone who can show you around the place where your people came from, the house your people were born in, the land they once farmed, and where possible, introduce you to living relatives today. Like this:Like...